The American internet site Opinionated About Dining (OAD) is a unique restaurant-rating system based on feedback from visitors. All kinds of details are combined to determine the final ranking: the type of feedback (ranging from positive to negative), the critics' level of experience (percentage of experienced and less-experienced critics) and their impact on an upward or downward trend or status quo that is awarded to the restaurant.
An advantage of the OAD list is that it reflects the opinion of a large group of dedicated people who make the effort to be critical of their food. In 2017, a total of 5,700 people from over 10 countries including France, Japan, the United States, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, were responsible for 175,000 opinions.
This year, the most famous Belgian chef Kobe Desramaults scored a fabulous 6th place in the OAD, with his new restaurant, Chambre Séparée, in Ghent. The restaurants appearing at numbers 1, 2 and 3 are Swiss, Swedish and Spanish respectively. However, another seven Belgian food temples feature in the top 100: Hertog Jan from Gert De Mangeleer in Zedelgem (11th), who has decided to close his doors at the end of 2018; L’air du Temps from Sang-Hoon Degeimbre in Liernu (35th), Hof van Cleve from Peter Goossens in Kruishoutem (36th), Bon Bon from Christophe Hardiquest in Brussels (71st), The Jane from Sergio Herman and Nick Bril in Antwerp (73th) and finally Souvenir from Vilhjalmur Sigurdarson in Ghent (95th).
